Shaping of the wide side walls of a chill mold has been performed by machining. Such methods however are fraught with high costs because of the required accuracy of the form and the surface quality.
De-AS 25 33 528 discloses a method of fabricating chill mold walls with a convex or concave shape, wherein one mold wall is formed in a die by the detonation force of an explosive. Such a method is expensive, as far as the apparatus involved is concerned and can be used on plates having large dimensions only with difficulty.
The wide side walls of chill mold for continuously cast steels are provided with cooling channels which extend, from the pouring gate, up to the continuous casting outlet end, approximately at equal spacings with respect to the working or active side of the wide side walls.
In chill molds for casting steel strips with a widened pouring region, forming of cooling channels extending at a uniform spacing from the bulged working side of the wide side walls is difficult and expensive. This applies especially to complicated shapes, for instance, according to FIG. 2 of the EP 0 268 910 B1, wherein a uniform spacing between the cooling channels and the working or active side of the wide side walls has not been achieved.
It is therefore an object of the invention to create a method for forming chill mold wide side walls of thin slab or steel strip-casting molds having precise shapes and surfaces economically and affording a high operational safety.